Partner responsiveness across the transition to parenthood.

What is it about?

This longitudinal study examined associations between perceptions of partner responsiveness and relationship satisfaction of each partner (all new parents) across the first 2 years of a chronically stressful life event—the transition to parenthood. Responsiveness is the degree to which partners respond to each other with understanding, validation, and care. Consistent with prior work, lower ratings of responsiveness receipt and provision predicted declines in relationship satisfaction across the transition. These effects, however, were moderated by parental stress, such that among new parents who reported experiencing higher levels of parental stress, providing higher levels of responsiveness to partners was associated with declines in relationship satisfaction. Conversely, under lower stress, relationship satisfaction benefited from higher levels of both providing and receiving responsiveness. All of these effects held when controlling for both partners’ levels of agreeableness, neuroticism, support-seeking, income, and work-family conflict.

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Why is it important?

Higher levels of partner responsiveness are usually associated with higher levels of relationship satisfaction. This study, however, identifies one important life context in which this association does not hold.